Stephanie Tarnasky, a BYU-Idaho alumna, is reminiscing how her company came to be and how it continues to grow.
When Tarnasky first got into the clothing industry she was still a student at BYU-Idaho. She sold jeans with the business name Jean Girl. She was able to make a profit selling the jeans at little parties at the homes of friends and on Craigslist.
“So we first started with jeans and so we were the Jean Girl,” Tarnaksy said. “That was like our original name. and we, that was literally what we sold but they were designer jeans that were hard to get. So we put them on Craigslist and people just started coming to our little studio apartment and buying jeans from us and we did that for probably two or three years before we expanded into like other things, like shoes, tops, dresses things like that."
A few months after she and her husband graduated, Tarnaksy got her start with an official store in Rexburg.
“So we went from graduation to a store and I didn’t have any employees,” Tarnasky said. “It was just me running everything and my husband would work and then he would ride his bike over to the store after work and that’s kind of what started it all.”
Tarnasky said Love Olive’s goal is to make modest clothing that is still trendy. She said they find design inspiration from different places, one being the mall.
“We love Pinterest. We love mood boards and just looking at ... we love going through the mall and just looking for different things, but a lot of things aren’t modest and something that we really want to focus on is being modest, but also trendy. And so, we like to find designs and then change them to be how our customers would want them.”
Tarnasky added that her stores will be selling new and approved temple dresses for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as well.
“We just finished designing our first temple collection, which I’m really excited about,” Tarnasky said. “We realized, man, there’s so many things that we could do more like petites or longer or different designs. You know? There’s not very many options for temple dresses and a lot of our stores have temples near them.”
Tarnasky said she has loved seeing how the communities around her stores support them with their business. She also said she loves seeing the friendships that grow between her employees.
“Our employees are all best friends, and I love that,” Tarnasky said. “I love that they hang out every weekend and that they support each other.”
Listen to BYU-Idaho Radio’s Podcast on Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts to hear the full interview with Love, Olive's Stephanie Tarnasky.